Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Microsoft Word

Oh, Word, how do I loathe thee. I loathe thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach. I loathe your weird crashes, your incomprehensible formatting, your amazingly annoying pop-up icons (which are not and never were cute) that give me no useful information. Ah, Word, my soul writhes with disgust knowing that I have to click on a stupid button for every single section of a 22-section document if I want the first page of that section to have a blank header. Yes, Word, your inexplicable formatting screw-ups when I delete what is, in your logic-free design, the wrong blank line, your stupid inability to represent some characters, and your tedious, slow scrolling, they gnaw at me, Word. I consign thee to the depths of hell, and from the depths of hell I stab at thee...

Anyone who has struggled with this crappy piece of software can sympathize. The beginning of this curse echoes the opening lines of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's famous sonnet:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and heightMy soul can reach...

The end of the curse also recalls Captain Ahab's words in chapter 135 of Herman Melville's Moby Dick:

To the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.